hypnosec writes: Russia’s Speech Technology Center (STC) has come up with ‘VoiceGrid Nation’ – a system that can match an identity to voice. Operating by the name SpeechPro in the US, the company claims to have invented a technology using advanced algorithms through which law enforcement agencies can build up a huge database containing millions of voices or ‘voice prints’ of criminals, persons of interest, people on watch list, and the likes. The technology will allow government agencies to create a countrywide biometric database designed to store millions of people’s “voice-prints.” Agencies, when not sure of callers of intercepted calls, can run the recording through the ‘VoiceGrid Nation’ and find a match. The technology has already been sold to Mexico back in 2010.

Assuming a success rate of 99.9% and a million matches, that's 1000 errors. If they are mismatches on checking accounts, you're going to have 2000 angry customers. If they are false positives looking for criminals, you're going to waste effort investigating 1000 innocent people. If they are false negatives looking for criminals, you're going to miss so many that there won't be any point in the process.

Even if you could run voice, iris, facial, footstep, and body language scanners all in parallel, all you